


Long Dark Night in Exile

by alizarin_nyc



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:56:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alizarin_nyc/pseuds/alizarin_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boyd goes looking for something on New Year's Eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Dark Night in Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scribewraith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribewraith/gifts).



They tumbled out of the collapsing mine and rolled along the ground, entangled in each others' limbs. Debris rained down and it was Raylan who tried to cover Boyd with his body, pushing Boyd hard into the unforgiving ground.

The Crowder’s house had a tin tub and a bucket. Raylan and Boyd chose the Givens’ house because it had a shower and there was food in the fridge. Plus, no one was home and they could holler and wrestle while the adrenalin drained from their systems. It didn’t seem all that unnatural at the time for Boyd to slide open the shower door on its rails and step inside. It didn’t seem that unnatural for Boyd to slide up behind Raylan and steal the soap. Their lips met up under the stream of hot water and hands circled the air like birds before landing on chest, hip, shoulders.

It wasn’t unnatural at all.

~*~

“I thought I told you to get out of town.” Raylan stands, hands on his hips, jaw jutting out, eyes narrowed. But if Boyd’s not mistaken, there’s a twinkle there somewhere, and it’s either at the notion that he can get the draw on him again, or at the thought of having Boyd Crowder back in Harlan for the sheer joy of his presence. Raylan steps back and Boyd steps through the doorway.

“You need to quit watching John Wayne movies in your spare time. You’re gettin’ a little too much Sheriff in you, not enough Deputy Marshall,” Boyd says. He saunters close, just to see how Raylan’s eyes look in the light. “Never gonna keep me away from my people.”

“Which people are you referring to? The ones you’re related to, the ones you collected in the forest or the ones you do time with? Because I’m not sure any of ‘em really care one way or the other.”

“That pains me, Raylan, it surely does.” Boyd is now front and center in Raylan’s motel room. He’s not sure why Raylan let him inside in the first place, but from the looks of things, the Marshall’s a bit lonely these days. There’s crumpled napkins and dogeared paperbacks on the nightstand. The yellow lampshade makes the room feel dirty. Ugly wallpaper and a moldy bathroom are a visual stench. “However, I’m feeling you haven’t got the fire in you to run me outta town tonight.”

“Well, it’s been a long year, Boyd.” Raylan’s gun is casual in his hand as he picks it up, checks the chamber. “Depends, I guess, on what you get up to next year.”

“I got no plans,” Boyd says. He doesn’t. He took time to mourn his papa in the way such things are done, and there were a few scores to settle along those lines. He’s been in Miami, mostly. There’s a nice career there, if he wants it. And yet here it is, New Year’s Eve, and he’s on Raylan Givens’ doorstep. On Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens’ doorstep. It’s interesting the way these things work out.

“How was your Christmas, Raylan?”

“You really asking me about my holidays, Boyd? That’s rich. I suppose you think to gloat over me losing Ava. And if you’re looking for her, I ain’t telling you where she is.”

“Ava. No. Not looking for Ava.” Boyd goes ahead and makes himself comfortable in an uncomfortable chair. “It rained in Miami.”

“Fascinatin’,” Raylan drawls. He picks up a bottle of whiskey from the table and fills a sticky glass. “Grab a plastic cup from the bathroom if you want some.”

Boyd gets his cup and Raylan pours generously.

“Remember when we spent New Year’s getting drunk in the church basement?” He’s smart enough not to mention how they danced, pretending they were in a big-city club, using the lights on their mining helmets to make strobe effects.

“Shut up,” Raylan says. “Let’s not reminisce about old times.”

“They were some good times,” Boyd offers.

“Long gone,” Raylan replies. He swigs more than a mouthful from his glass, which tells Boyd it’s the exact opposite. In fact, the Marshall’s not arresting him or shooting him, so it could be said he’s glad of the company. It could be said the past is not all forgotten.

“Still and all.” Boyd downs what’s in his cup and Raylan reaches forward to give him more. Raylan’s just unsteady enough that Boyd knows he’s been celebrating the forthcoming new year for a few hours already. “You and me we had a good friendship. _Have_. I appreciate you letting me loose and keeping your dogs off me.”

“Maybe you’re just not worth the chase.”

“Now that’s the kind of attitude that got me so mad in the first place.” Boyd leans way back in the chair. He’s going to pull on Raylan this time, but he’s not going to use a gun.

“In the first place?” Raylan looks like he can hardly believe Boyd is giving him lip.

“Yeah. Back in the day, Raylan. You as good as told me I wasn’t worth it. Wasn’t worth getting beat up for. Wasn’t worth sticking around for. But you know, I forgive you. In fact, I long forgave you, more’n I could ever forgive myself.” Boyd sits forward in his chair, rests the whiskey between his fingers, lets it dangle.

“The things that come out of your mouth never did make much sense,” Raylan says. “You know how it was back then. And we were boys, that’s all it was.”

“Sure, sure. Boys. I know. It was risky and you know what? We took that risk. We took it a lot. And you left and that was for the best.”

“Damn right it was. I had my life to live, Boyd, you know that.”

“And I had mine.” Boyd leans back, point made. He doesn’t blame Raylan. Way he was raised, it was always going to be a violent way of life. He had to be a leader, he didn’t care what of.

There was no point in thinking what might have been.

“But we had our times,” Boyd finishes.

“Yeah,” Raylan says, and now he’s looking at Boyd’s mouth, and if this isn’t a turn of events, Boyd does not know what is. “We had good times. You and me.”

“You and me.” Boyd barely gets the words out before he’s up out of his chair. Raylan is too, and maybe he’s going for his gun or maybe he’s going to start throwing punches. But since he does neither, just stands, unsteady on his feet, Boyd places his hands around Raylan's head and drags him forward into a kiss.

~*~

Bad things can happen,” Raylan said. “Anyone finds us out.” The two of them were coiled together on a rough blanket in the woods, staring at branches gone wintry with the first cold snap.

“I’d just kill anyone who laid a hand,” Boyd said. “No faster message than that.”

“Don’t say that. Ain’t right.” Raylan had taken up smoking and was now focused on pulling the smoke into his lungs cleanly, letting it sit deep in his chest, and then blowing it out quickly so it wouldn’t linger on him. He was attentive to those kinds of details, even then.

“Ain’t right to stick a nose where they ain’t _got_ no right,” Boyd replied. He ran a hand up Raylan’s jean-clad leg, slowly. Getting Raylan to let him fuck him was no easy task. He had to gentle him, like a horse, then rope him in, paralyze him, make him feel aroused by his own submission.

Raylan stubbed out the cigarette and flicked it into the bushes. “All I’m sayin’ is, we don’t get caught, it’s better for us. You know I’m right.”

“You’re right, Raylan,” Boyd said, slow as a summer’s day. “You’re always right.”

~*~

Boyd is thrown down on the motel bed and the cover is so cheap it scratches his face. He doesn’t give a damn. Raylan is angrily pulling his jeans down and off and Boyd wriggles to aid him.

“Lord, forgive me my sin,” he says, just as he feels the prickle of Raylan’s days-old scruff on his ass.

“Shut _up_ ,” Raylan insists, his voice a low rasp. “If you invoke religion right now I will shoot you.”

“Fuck me first,” Boyd grits out. And he is damned to hell, he knows it. He’ll go willingly if he can just have this. If he can just get Raylan inside him.

Raylan’s doing something toward that goal. He’s kissing – or not really kissing, it’s less intimate, it’s more like _mouthing_ ; he’s mouthing Boyd’s spine and the cheeks of his ass. He hauls Boyd up the bed as if he weighs no more than a leaf. Raylan picks up a bottle of lotion from his nightstand and Boyd pictures Raylan’s lonely nights alone in his sad-sack motel room. Was he thinking of Ava? His pretty little ex-wife? More than likely. Not Boyd. Not ever Boyd. And yet he’s the one with Raylan’s fingers up his ass, like the man’s searching for gold. What he eventually finds is even better, so far as Boyd’s concerned.

Boyd says nothing. As eighteen year-old kids, they’d been embarrassed by what they were doing to begin with, there wasn’t much dirty talk. And now Boyd senses that if he draws any attention to himself, Raylan will open his eyes and reach for his gun.

But Boyd’s wrong. At least a little. Because when Raylan sinks all the way into him, friction tearing at Boyd’s insides like fire, the sound he hears is his own name.

~*~

On another day there was a mudslide and the miners were slick with brown. Boyd and Raylan had gotten used to saving each other lives; it was a thing with them. On that day it was Raylan hauling Boyd out from beneath a cascade of rock and mud. It was the land’s way of paying them back for what they did to her innards.

Boyd came out and claimed he’d seen hell down there, and Raylan told him it was just mud in his eyes. Mud he was altogether too carefully wiping away with his shirt. Boyd slapped his hands down before any of the other men could see the gentleness in him.

Later they drove around, looking for a place to park so they could fuck in the backseat of Raylan’s daddy’s car. It should have been easy, but you never knew who was going to come around with a shotgun and shoot them for poachers. Boyd could still feel mud in his ears and under his nails.

Raylan didn’t stop driving that night; he just kept on going until sunrise. Neither one of them said a word. Raylan seemed shaken by their brush with disaster. Boyd wasn’t speaking because he was fighting off a growing certainty that Hell was more real than he’d yet imagined. He was thinking how there was surely sin in the world and he surely was a sinner.

He was also pretty certain that Raylan was going to be a real good man someday, if he ever got out of Harlan.

~*~

“You best be gone by morning,” Raylan says, and his voice is silky and honey-smooth in Boyd’s ear. Boyd shifts uncomfortably, he needs to use the john. He feels satisfactorily abused, despite Raylan’s gentlemanly ways in bed.

“Yeah, I know I got to get out of here or run the risk of waking up handcuffed to your bedpost. Although now I say it, it don’t sound half bad.”

“Knock it off Boyd.”

Boyd gets up and uses the john, taking care of private matters and getting himself sorted out. He finds some aspirin in the medicine cabinet and takes three, pocketing what’s left. When he emerges, Raylan looks surprised.

“You leavin’ already?”

“Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

“Yeah, but I said _morning_ , didn’t I? And we missed the New Year, it was fifteen minutes ago.”

“Sounds to me like we were right on time.”

Raylan gets out of the bed and stands naked at the table. He pours more whiskey in their glasses. “One more for the road.” It’s an order, a statement and a question all at the same time. Raylan puts on his hat. It’s the most ridiculous thing Boyd has ever seen anyone do and all the more so for it being Raylan.

“I feel naked without it,” Raylan says.

“You’re a damn fool,” Boyd says and takes the cup he’s offered.

Exile can wait until first light.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Lin, who was a good friend on this one.


End file.
